


The Right Motive

by GretchenSinister



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-09 07:33:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18633661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: Original Prompt: "In the past people would get married earlier. Jack already has a pregnent (?)wife by the time he dies. The baby lives until adulthood and becomes pitch ( Different name? Foreign wife? Still in mourning??)Age jack up or pitch down. Make him a reincarnation of the original book pitch courtesy of Manny( Preferred). Anything is fine. Can stay completely Gen.Bonuses :Guardians Battle him w jack like usual until jack gets his memories back.They figure it out eventually.Pitch It’s still a bit resentful regardless.Human pitch has a daughter but feels like he is missing something(if reincarnation Au)"After Jack becomes a Guardian, he persuades the others that Pitch should look in his memory box. What Pitch finds is something that doesn’t make sense with the memories he thought he had, and is also something he really needs to talk to Jack about.It also may be time for a change, but Jack wants to make sure he’s doing it for the right reasons.





	The Right Motive

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr on 6/1/2015.

“I met Pitch out at night,” Jack tells the others. “He doesn’t have his memories. We need to find them. Tooth, you said we were all someone before. If it’s the same for Pitch, I think we need to know. And I think he needs to know.”  
  
They object, at first. They don’t want to give Pitch anything, not after what he did. But Jack persuades them. He persuades them it will not make anything worse, at least.  
  
***  
  
Pitch’s memories are easy to find. All the fairies know where the unusual tooth boxes are, and this one is very unusual. It’s one of the few that is centuries old, yet still belongs to someone living, and one of the fewer still that’s so old and still has no name attached to it. It is the only one with the dust still on it. It wasn’t taken during Pitch’s attack. The only one.  
  
Jack brings the box to Pitch anyway. Sandy waits outside, his thinnest strand of dreamsand tethered to Jack’s back. Jack returns empty-handed, and Sandy nods.  
  
Not even Jack sees even a shadow of Pitch for months after that.  
  
***  
  
Jack is the one who sees him for the first time afterwards, standing by the wave of ice and shadow that still stands in Antarctica.  
  
“I’m glad you didn’t destroy this,” Pitch says stiffly, when Jack lands. “I wasn’t sure how else to seek you out.”  
  
“You could have gone to the Pole,” Jack says, “It’s the easiest way to contact any of us.”  
  
“And be taken prisoner, and ruin my cheerful mood?”  
  
There hasn’t been anything even vaguely resembling a smile on Pitch’s face while Jack’s been here.  
  
“Forget it,” says Jack. “You wanted to talk to me?”  
  
“Yes.” Pitch paces back and forth for a few steps, his hands clasped in front of him. He takes only brief glances at Jack now. “There were many things in that memory box that I didn’t expect, and I have more questions than ever—the memories ended with my youth, and so I still don’t know how I—well, you won’t be able to answer that. But what I did see was that I was a child in Burgess. My mother had only been widowed a few months after her wedding. I grew up without a father, but my mother did tell me how he died, once I was old enough to understand. He died saving his little sister from falling through the ice, on a day when he had gone to visit his mother. He died the way you did, the way you told me when you also told me I should look at my memory box.”  
  
“But I was so young…” Jack says, staring at Pitch in disbelief. “And there were no memories of…I mean, you know.”  
  
Pitch shrugs and looks down at the snow. “My mother was young, too. And the memory boxes…I don’t think they show everything that one remembers. You’ll have to ask Tooth. But I think, somehow…I’m your son.”  
  
“That doesn’t make sense,” Jack says. “You—not the memory-box you, but this you—remember stuff that happened centuries before I was born! What about the dark ages?”  
  
“I don’t know!” Pitch snaps. “Maybe I’m not like you! Maybe there’s something older that your son—I—picked up, when I was an adult. There’s a gap in my memories after a battle with the Guardians in the dark ages. And the rabbit thinks I was gone, really gone, for a time. Maybe I didn’t have a body until I became this one! Maybe…” Pitch trails off, then folds his arms. “Maybe the part of me that remembers the dark ages, which is all of myself that I have known until now…maybe I…killed your son.” He sneers and hunches his shoulders protectively. “Wouldn’t that just be typical?”  
  
Jack sighs. “If the memories you saw are the memories of my son, then you’re still alive, because you’re not a tooth fairy, and no one who isn’t can look at memories that aren’t their own. And it has to do with your mind/spirit rather than your body—I talked this out with Tooth because of my own situation. So if you’re not  _only_ my son, you’re  _also_  him.”  
  
Pitch relaxes slightly. “So now what? Do you…” he tenses up again. “Do you want him back?”  
  
Jack tilts his head. “Do you mean, am I going to try to separate the parts of you that were part of my biological child from the parts that aren’t? No. I don’t know a lot about magic, yet, but I think that would be really difficult, have a lot of unintended consequences, and probably kill you as I know you. I don’t really want that. And anyway…” he shrugs and shakes his head. “What does it mean for you to be my son? I died before you were born. I never raised you. And now we’re both about three hundred years old, at least. I can’t miss someone I didn’t know. I don’t remember specifically wanting a child, and you’re not a child now.”  
  
“Another rejection, then. I see. I suppose I should be glad that you’re letting me live.” Pitch nods once, and turns to go.  
  
“Hold up,” Jack says, raising his hand to beckon him back. “You know, that’s actually not what I’m saying. I’m just saying it wouldn’t make any sense for me to try to relate to you like I was your father, and for you to try to relate to me like you were my son. I mean, come on! Do you really want me to be your dad?”  
  
“I…suppose it would be rather strange.”  
  
Jack smiles. “No kidding. Look, Pitch. I don’t think I can be your dad. I think we’re both at a point in our existences where that wouldn’t work. But you  _are_ smart enough to know that. And I don’t think you would have wanted to see me just to pass along the information. So. You’ve just discovered something pretty strange about your memories and you’re not exactly who you thought you were. So maybe…maybe you don’t have to be the way you’ve been, but you don’t know how to do it on your own. If you want to talk to me about that, you can. But I want you to do that because you want to, not because of a very, very old biological link.”  
  
Pitch looks at him for a long moment. “Won’t that link make what you’re doing more acceptable to the Guardians?”  
  
“Probably not,” Jack says. “But the truth will. Really.”  
  
“Fine,” Pitch says. “You had better be able to prove it.”  
  
“Don’t worry,” says Jack. “I can take care of anything. Because while I’m not sure we’d have fun if I was your dad, I am sure we’d have more fun if you were slightly less chaotic evil.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments from Tumblr:
> 
> kazechama said: This is so sweet and cute and I love it a lot.
> 
> bowlingforgerbils said: What an unusual prompt, but I like what you did with it.


End file.
